Saturnino Allende crouches beside a mountain path and gently puts his fingers around the stem of a plant with rough, tongue-shaped leaves. "This is it," he says about the powerful hallucinogen Salvia divinorum, known as "magic mint." In just a few years, it has emerged from Mexico's Indian villages into one of the hottest drugs in the USA and a crucial cash crop for poor farmers here.>>>

Ten years ago the government set out to test herbal and other alternative health remedies to find the ones that work. After spending $2.5 billion, the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do.>>>

Peruvian region of Ucayali will boost mystic tourism in order to attract more domestic and foreign visitors, especially tourists from Europe. Regional tourism authorities are currently launching a project to start next July. Local tourism official Freddy Rios Flores said they are waiting for the first financial support (29,000 soles) from the regional government.

Every aspect of the Rice Goddess ceremony, Mnhum Yang Potai, is highly symbolic.“Red symbolizes sweat, blood, and the energy needed to grow rice,” says Ya Hang, a 53-year old leader of the ethnic Chu Ru community in a remote Lam Dong Province village. Hang and several other men from Proh Commune, Don Duong District, squat in the hot Central Highlands’ sun, carving two long bamboo poles.>>>

Even a youthful vandal who was caught in the act of bending and breaking off portions of a bronze statue’s headdress couldn’t stop the healing of Mother Earth that took place Saturday, June 20, at the southeast corner of the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Anderson. “We know there was once a village here where this shopping center now stands. This was a flat plain and there was a spring up on the hill,” >>>